sing, sing my arrowstring
by vega-de-la-lyre
Summary: “You wanna show me your moves, rich girl?” Clint Barton/Kate Bishop futurefic, set five years ahead of current canon.


**Title**: sing, sing my arrow-string  
**Fandom**: Avengers/Young Avengers**  
Word Count**: 2453  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Characters/Pairings:** Clint Barton/Kate Bishop  
**Disclaimer**: Everything you recognise is Marvel's; the title comes from a poem by Hilda Doolittle.  
**Summary**: _"You wanna show me your moves, rich girl?" _Clint/Kate futurefic,set five years ahead of current canon.

--

It's the smell of lilacs that alerts Clint to her presence.

He closes the door behind him, setting his grocery bags down on the kitchen counter, and though it's nighttime he can see her clearly by the window in the living room. Her white skin is a garish green-and-pink under the buzzing neon lights of the stores opposite his building, and she's turning a framed photo of him and Bobbi back in their glory days—costumed and fierce and painfully young—over and over in her hands.

"Hey, Bishop," he says easily, pulling open the fridge door. "Long time no see."

He has his back to her, but he can feel and hear her moving around behind him. Casually, Clint takes the old milk out, sniffs it, and tosses it, and starts putting away the rest of the groceries. He considers, momentarily, sticking his head in the freezer; the night is unpleasantly humid and sticky and although he can smell a rainstorm coming, the ominous black clouds outside have yet to break.

"Guess so, old man," she says, and when he turns she is in the kitchen and leaning back against the cupboards, looking gorgeous and dangerous in high heeled boots and a predictably purple minidress that leaves exactly nothing to the imagination, revealing a treacherous amount of exposed pale curves. There is a smile on her lips, but her eyes are dark and worried.

"There's not a grey hair on my head, I'll have you know," he says, closing the fridge, and because he's Clint and this is what he does he gives her a very obvious once over and whistles. "Zombie looks good on you, girl."

She looks shaken at that, but shrugs it off. "I'm not—_Clint_," she says, exasperated. "I'm not a zombie."

"Yeah, but everyone treats you like one, don't they?" Clint braces his hands on the kitchen island. "I went through the same thing, Kate. I know how it is. Eight months is a long time to be out of commission, and after the way we all saw you go down? They're probably all scared shitless of you."

Kate nods and bites her lip, a little distracted habit he'd noticed back when she was a teen—one that he was sure she'd grown out of years ago. "I think Billy told them to leave me alone for now, but I don't want that. I just need it to be normal again, and they're tiptoeing around me like if they talk too loudly I'll lose it, or bite the dust again, and Eli—Eli won't even _look_ at me, and, I mean, you know what happened is so far from being his fault, but he feels so guilty, which makes me feel worse, and I just—" She laughs bitterly. "I just can't stand it, Clint. They're driving me crazy. I had to get out of there."

"They mean well," Clint says, shoving the empty bags under the sink, "not like that makes it feel any better, huh? And about Eli… you've got to know, Kate, we all felt that way when you—when you died. It wasn't pretty for any of us for awhile there, he's just never stopped beating himself up for it like the rest of us did. But he'll get over it."

He doesn't tell Kate about the months he spent playing that horrific battle over and over his mind. He can still see the fierce set of her face and the wild gleam of her eyes as she throws herself into the fray, gleaming staves whirring in her gloved hands, can still hear the sickening crunch as metal cleaves through the bone and flesh of her solar plexus and leaves her lying like a broken doll on the asphalt with a touch of scarlet at the corner of her greying lips. He doesn't tell her about the night he went to Doctor Strange and pleaded with him to bring her back, whatever dark magic he'd have to use, to just _do_ it, and how when Strange had refused, eyes grave and more than a little sympathetic, Clint had completely lost it. And he doesn't tell her about how the news that she was back, living and breathing and walking about the city like not a damn thing had happened, was like a suckerpunch to the gut and he'd locked himself in his room at Stark Tower and not come out for a full day.

What good would it do her at this point, to tell her these things? No. He's not going to do that to her.

Kate swipes one hand across her eyes angrily. "I don't care if he does get over it," she says, "I'm sick of it. I'm sick of Eli."

"Kate." He comes around to her side of the island and lifts her chin. She jerks away to stare at the floor, but he can still see the tear tracks shining on her cheeks, and when she gathers her glossy black hair back from her face the scent of lilacs is almost overwhelming. She's wearing the perfume far too heavy, and her lipstick is too dark and thick; she's trying to overcompensate, trying to tie herself more firmly to the earth. Clint can tell it isn't working.

"I haven't talked to my family yet," Kate says after a moment, her face tight. "They don't know that I… that I'm back. I can't tell them, Clint," she adds, "I mean, for all I know some supervillain'll end up offing me in a couple weeks, and I can't put them through all that again. And how am I supposed to explain what happened to me? Say the word "magic" around my father and he'll laugh you out the door. It's just not fair to them."

"They threw you a really nice funeral," Clint says, nudging her with a smile. "For what it's worth."

"Thanks," Kate says dryly, and she sniffs her last tears away. "I saw them today. I went back to my old street, you know, I saw my dad and my sister eating lunch through the front window, and—Jesus. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, walking away from that place."

"Yeah," Clint says. "But you're alive, and they're alive, and that's more than most of us get."

There's a flicker of recognition and something like sympathy in her eyes. "It's just not fair," she says. "That's all. For any of us."

"Our lives are never fair, girly-girl," Clint says wryly. "Listen. When you were gone, Jessica Jones told me something about what happened to you before the Young Avengers shtick. Back when you were attacked in Central Park—"

The lines of Kate's body, silhouetted against the flickering neon lights, go taut. "Shut up," she says, voice furious, "she had no_ right_—" and before he realises it she is on her feet and about to go out through the open window.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Kate," Clint says. He stands, but doesn't go after her, and she pauses with one fist clenched on the curtains. "I wasn't going to—look. My point is, you didn't play the victim when that went down. Bad shit happens, and it throws you for a loop, and then you calm down and pull yourself the fuck together and get on with your life," he finishes, voice hard.

The tension in her shoulders eases just a little, and it's here that he understands that she's more comfortable with him when he's being cruel than when he's being kind, and exactly how wrong he's done everything thus far.

She turns to face him. "I can't," she says, and he sees her hands are shaking. "I can't pull myself together because I'm losing it, Clint, I can't handle my nerves, I'm more likely to hurt myself with the sword than anyone else, I can't even pull my fucking bowstring anymore—they're going to kick me off the team, and it's not like—I don't—I don't have any powers like the rest of them, I'm so goddamn _useless_," and here her voice hitches with a sob and she presses one hand to her neck like maybe if she throttles herself she'll magically get it together.

"Okay," Clint says. "I'm clearly not a therapist, or anything. I told you once I wasn't going to pretend to be your life coach, and I'm not going to now, and plus, come on, I'm probably the last guy anyone would want to talk to about their emotional issues. But this we can deal with. Okay?"

Kate nods firmly.

"Right," Clint says. "Get your ass in the training room."

--

Kate stands in her bare feet on the mat wearing nothing but a white tank and a faded old pair of Clint's sweatpants double knotted at the waist, her abandoned clothes piled in the corner of the room. "Again," Clint says, and Kate lowers the bow, her arms trembling with exertion.

"I can't," she says, a line of sweat running down her neck. It's breathlessly hot in the apartment, and steadily getting worse. "My eye's all shot to hell, Clint, and I'm so tired—I'm not going to get any better tonight."

"Quit making excuses, Kate, there isn't a thing wrong with your eye," Clint says, and rubs the blossoming bruises she'd left on his ribcage after taking him in hand-to-hand. "It's all in your head. Your reflexes are fine, when you don't second-guess yourself to death, and for a girl who just rose from the dead, your body is as good as it ever was. _Again_."

Cheeks pink, Kate raises the bow again, sighting carefully down the arrow, but with Clint standing over her shoulder, his breath barely stirring her hair, she lets it fly too quickly and makes an angry noise deep in her throat when it buries itself a hand's-breadth from the centre of the target. She turns to look at Clint in frustration. "I told you," she says. "I just can't do it anymore."

Clint shrugs. "Fine," he says. "If that's all the effort you're willing to give, I'm sure as hell not going to waste my time with you."

Kate stares at him.

"You know," Clint says, "back when you were a kid, I thought you had something in you? I mean, I let you keep my name, didn't I? I let you keep my _bow_. But I guess I was wrong. I guess you don't have the guts, after all. If you're going to get your emotions get the better of you, I can promise that you're better off quitting right now, or else you're going to get yourself and your teammates in trouble."

Kate looks at the floor, humiliated and livid, as he waits for her response. After half a minute, the hot flush fading from her cheeks, she picks up one of the discarded arrows from the floor and weighs it in her hand thoughtfully, wiping at the sweat on her forehead with her other wrist.

Yes, he thinks, face impassive. C'mon, Kate.

Coolly, she takes a deep breath, then fits the arrow to the string, raises it, and, completely relaxed and serene for the first time tonight—she lets it go. It finds the dead centre of the target easily, and she rubs a sweaty, shaking hand down her stomach.

Clint nods to himself, pleased. "Good job, Kate," he says. "Now, get something to drink, for God's sake, you're making me exhausted just looking at you."

Kate glares up at him. "You, sir, are a royal asshole," she says, poking him square in the chest with one finger, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

"Well, yeah," Clint says. "But it worked, didn't it?"

She wrinkles her nose at him and lets the bow fall to the floor, and while normally Clint would get on her case about mistreating his property he lets it slide this time and follows her as she makes her way outside to the tiny, grubby balcony that overlooks an ominous-looking alley. Kate leans on the battered wrought-iron railing, sweeping her hair back from her face; with the humid dampness in the air, it's exactly as warm out here as it is back in the apartment, with no breeze to relieve the heat.

Clint crosses his arms and waits.

"I'm sorry," she says, rubbing the back of her neck ruefully. "About everything, about showing up here and acting like such a spoiled bitch—you don't owe me anything, Clint, and… I'm just sorry about a lot of things, I guess."

Clint shrugs one shoulder lazily. "I know," he says. "But hey. If I didn't want you here, you know I could easily kick your ass out."

Kate straightens, one eyebrow quirking. "You wish, brother," she says, and for a moment they're just smiling at each other stupidly, practically nose-to-nose because there's no damn room on this narrow balcony, and then Kate looks down and twines her fingers together in a fidgety way that he's never seen before, saying, "I should really go, though. They'll be wondering where I took off to."

Clint reaches out, wrapping one hand around the curve of her slim hip. "You don't have to, you know," he says, and he can hear her breath hitch in her throat as her blue eyes widen. "Leave, I mean. I get it, Kate, like no one else can. I mean, both things. I was pretty much the only Avenger back in the day without powers, or Pym particles, or dumb techy suits of armour… and I came back from the dead, too. Twice. I know what you're feeling. Out of date and out of place and scared to death, that's the two of us, am I right?"

A contemplative smile twisting her mouth, Kate rakes Clint's wild blond hair off his forehead. Her fingernails drag across his scalp and send a chill down the length of his spine. "Talk to your family," Clint says, trying hard to keep his voice level as his eyes fix on the smear of dark plum lipstick across her full bottom lip and her body presses flush against his. "If they love you, and I know they do, then they'll think it's worth the heartache. To have you back—"

"Shut up, Clint," she says, sliding an arm around his neck, and Clint sharply inhales the fresh smell of a summer storm mingled with the last of the lilac perfume fading on the insides of her wrists.

"You wanna show me your moves, rich girl?" he murmurs, and Kate's lips stretch into a smile under his as the first drops of rain fall from the sky.


End file.
